In Their Own Words

November 17, 1864

Injured Civil War Soldier Wrote from Savannah

A Georgia soldier who had been serving in Virginia was back in Georgia, but not under happy circumstances, as he recorded from a hospital in Savannah.

“…Once more by the goodness and mercy of a kind providence I am in the land that gave me birth. I lost my foot in the battle of Cedar Creek on October 19th, at Strasburg, Valley of Virginia, and was captured the same day. Arrived here in Savannah after being [traveling] on water twenty days. [I] have suffered greatly as my wound is not doing well. I feel sure I owe my life to a Virginia lady, a Mrs. William A. Davis. She came to the place I was kept a prisoner and asked the authorities to allow her to take two or more prisoners that were in the most desperate condition to her home and care for them. As she passed through she stopped by my side and inquired as to how I was getting on. I told her I would surely die unless something could be done for me. She had me placed in her carriage and I was carried to her home. She prepared food that I could eat and nursed me as she would her own son until I was able to travel. She also wrote my wife and I was wounded at [the] battle of Cedar Creek and that I lost my foot and was taken prisoner. She lived at Newtown, Virginia. God bless her. …”